Page 68 of Stolen By the Billionaire
The home gym was under the garage, fortified in every way, and vented to the outside. The long windows at the top of one wall were reinforced with steel mesh.
One solo emergency light above the door illuminated the space, casting long-legged shadows from the weight benches and treadmill onto the walls.
He propelled Sarah over to a weight bench, sat her down because her breathing still had a hitch, and ran to the opposite wall to slap his palm against the sensor that was hardwired into the emergency backup electrical system with a separate line from the rest of the security system, opening his gun safes.
Bastards hadn’t been able to hack those. Different system.
She sucked in a deep breath and blurted out, “Were they the same guys? Did they follow us?”
He nodded and opened more locks inside the safe.
“How could they follow us?”
“Mary Varvara Bell knows who I am. She must have figured out where I live.”
The house had been bought through trusts, so it should have been harder to trace.
And yet, his enemies had found him, so the layered trusts that the lawyers had advised hadn’t done jack shit.
She wound her arms over her chest like she was protecting her center mass. “So coming here wasn’t the right plan? We should have gone somewhere else?”
“No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” Blaze recited.
From the first vault, he pulled out two handguns equipped with silencers, quickly checking both to make sure they were loaded and the safeties were engaged, plus a pair of low-light night vision goggles. He swung the heavy gun safe door closed and tapped the red button to rearm the locks.
Sarah gestured wildly toward his armory. “Give me a weapon! I can help!”
Blaze was not giving a gun to the woman who thought he’d kidnapped her. “Lock the door behind me.”
“I’m a good shot! I can help. I don’t care if you think they’re from my aunt, but I know they’re from Monsanto, or ConAgra. Even if they’re after you instead of me, I know we’re on the same side. Give me a gun.”
Blaze was not going to test Sarah’s newfound loyalty when they were under fire. “Don’t open the door for anybody but me.”
He sprinted out of the gym and yanked the door closed, pausing only until the double locks clicked.
Outside the gym, the air in the hallway felt solid, immobile, not a whisper or a draft from someone else’s breath. He crammed the NVGs on his head and pulled them over his eyes, adjusting the dials for the cracks of light leaking out of the bedrooms from the emergency lamps.
Green static filled the hallway, but no intruders lurked there.
After several minutes with no movement, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and curled around it, clicking his NVGs back to ambient light so he wouldn’t blind himself. He shuttered the screen’s dim glow with his hands as best he could. On the phone app, he found a contact that auto-filled as Rogue Emergency and thumbed a text. After that, with two taps, the phone was in silent and dark mode to not betray his position.
Blaze dropped to the floor and commando-crawled on his elbows and knees to the corner.
Around the corner and at the far end of the hallway, four silhouettes holding guns low and forward clustered and were whispering.
Two of them were cradling their sides, and one of those had an arm hanging at an unnatural angle.
Good.
Yes, Blaze could have sniped them from right there, but killing a non-attacking target—even if it was only currently non-attacking—from a distance, from under cover, and on American soil, might be problematic.
Had they fired any shots?
Not yet.
Could you have retreated to a safe location?
Yeah, the gym. It was impregnable.
